The meaning of health perceived by adult immigrant women in Canada is discussed from the perspectives of immigration, culture, and lived experience to understand their encounters with health care professionals. Authors base their findings on the thematic analysis of focus group data. Immigrant women viewed health as the outcome of a web of interactions between conditions of mental, physical, social, emotional, environmental, and spiritual well-being, appealing to both biomedical and phenomenological ideologies. Our analyses of qualitative data revealed that the disagreements noted by immigrant women when interacting with health care professionals were due to the discrepancies between their cultural views of health and the dominant biomedical perspective.

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information processing psychological aspect human Health Behavior middle aged Ethnic Groups ethnic group Professional-Patient Relations Aged ethnology human relation Humans Canada Acculturation female questionnaire verbal communication cultural factor Narration women's health Article Questionnaires migration patient attitude Emigration and Immigration Patient Acceptance of Health Care attitude to health Nova Scotia Focus Groups